Paragon of Revenge

Revenge, he was crafted carefully. He was different from hate, he could not be a blind slave to anger nor be apathetic. He had to care, at least in the beginning. Through a lifetime of parts and pieces, his life was a collage of broken hopes and dreams. Betrayal was the key, betrayal and impotent rage. The final act came through his wife. She had been the perfect love, for three years he had everything he wanted. This was crucial, a man without hope becomes dissallusioned, loses concern for the world. A man with hopes continually ravaged, this is the springbed for revenge.

His ascension arose midway through a vacation. His wife was five months pregnant. On the second day of the vacation, she disappeared. His search was long and arduous. When he finally found her, he believed that he had won back his life. His wife then pierced him in the back. As he lay dying she told him with as much contempt as she could that she had already killed his unborn child and that she had never loved him. In his death, his hate was cemented. The ritual had been fulfilled.

After her death, his lust for revenge did not wane. That is how you establish a paragon. You craft the life from start to finish to tell a story. If the story is told well enough, the paragon is established and the persona finalized. Many lives were lost in the crafting, the man, his wife, their child, the wife’s lover, the three agents who arranged the final ceremony.

In a final note of irony, the man, who must remain nameless, was a purely crafted being. His long life of betrayal, sorrow, loneliness, defiance, and death were all arranged. His wife was a willing participant in his murder, yet she bore him no ill will. Nor did the agents who guided the man’s life. They all took part in his story, knowing that his eventual ascension would result in their deaths. The wife and her lover were found dead two months after the final ritual, her body twisted and mangled. The agents came later. In truth, this is the final record of the ritual as even the director of the program [Editor] will be killed. Such is the success of the project. All records of the man’s name, identity, and past have been erased. Without a name, the paragon will have no innate weaknesses and be more fully able to act out the revenge. Hopefully, that will be enough.

__—–__

Post edit, this story is the concept that a supernatural being can be created through a careful series of events. Rather than waiting for such a being to come into existence, an organization took to designing and creating a Paragon of Vengeance. This being will seek out grievous wrong doings that go unpunished and punish them.

The concept that the man’s life was nothing more than an extended process of creating the perfect spirit of vengeance is an interesting concept because it creates a second layer to the tragedy. Rather than his vengeance being his own response and triumph against the people who wronged him, they actually win in the end because all they wanted was to make him into the spirit of vengeance. In this way, by pursuing his vengeance against them, he seals his fate and locks himself into an unending process of killing wrong doers. He in essence makes the choice to not move on.

An additional concept that cannot be explored in the first writing is that the people who crafted the man’s life are not neccesarily acting out of hatred or contempt towards him. The background is that the wife was wronged in her past and she therefore agreed to help create the Paragon in order to get revenge against the person who slighted her. For additional tragedy elements, a journal of the wife can be discovered expressing regret and even love for the man. The spirit may even be empowered in finding out his entire life was orchestrated.

Without being able to fully express the visual, I see the idea of finding out that one’s tragedy is orchestrated to be similar to movie set or a lab experiment. That just outside of the horrifying setting, there is a clean and steril room of people watching and adjusting.